True Blood

Nicola and I are currently re-watching season 1 of True Blood on DVD. I love this show. Great writing, acting, direction; a strong story line; a lot of attention to detail; and a real sense of Southern rhythms and mores (you might be surprised how many people get this wrong). The South of this show is televisualized, and in many ways idealized, but I’ve never seen anything on television that better captures the layered essence of Southern culture as I experienced it growing up. The open acknowledgment and subtle systemic practices of racism between individual people, whether they are friends or not. The ways the local bar serves as the commons. The complicated rules of gender in which women can be strong without gaining power and men can be weak without losing it — that strength and weakness are part of what keeps the power imbalance from blowing up all over the boys, and it’s beautifully played out over and over again in great examples of “show, don’t tell.”

I’m a fan of good series TV because of the longer-term, deeper storytelling that is possible; the novelistic qualities of taking more time to explore characters and relationship, establish backstory, wander through the physical and psychological terrain. True Blood does all this and more: it’s emotionally complex, socially true, a huge amount of fun and occasionally very shocking and icky, and the people of Bon Temps are fantastic — I haven’t met a TB character I didn’t want to know more about, even the unpleasant ones. Sookie and Bill; lonely, loyal Sam; Jason, the world’s most cheerful horndog; Tara and her terrible tragic mother; Terry, the sad war veteran; Pam, the vampire bouncer; and the fabulous Lafayette….

Well, see Lafayette for yourself. This is one of my favorite scenes in the season (and is absolutely Not Safe For Work):

And here’s the scene that sets up the romantic relationship between the show’s protagonist, Sookie Stackhouse, and the vampire Bill Compton. Here’s what you need to know: Sookie can hear people’s thoughts, although she mostly works hard not to. Vampires now move more or less openly in society (one of the underlying themes of the show are various explorations of “being out”). But Bill is the first vampire Sookie’s ever met: he has just come into the bar where she works, and she’s overheard some people thinking Bad Thoughts about him. When they leave, she follows them outside, and finds them draining Bill of his blood (which has become a popular street drug called “V”). (And this clip is also NSFW.)

Enjoy! And if you like what you see, I can highly recommend season 1 on DVD.